New gaming PC

ionapaul

Hey all,

I'm very tired with my current rig and am thinking of getting a new machine; I don't have the will to build from scratch so am thinking of pre-built (Dell, Komplett, etc...have only had good experiences with both of these companies actually) and don't want to deal with the bother of going through the hassle of that German company everyone loves, I can live with paying €50+ more for the PC.

I'm thinking of spending between €800 - €1000, which will be somewhat subsidised by selling most of my current rig seperately after the new PC is set up. I will keep / destroy my IDE hard drives (do new PCs / motherboard set ups allow for easy addition of older IDE drives?) and have a 9600GT that is a few months old that might be worth keeping (I could always go for the cheapest graphics card with a pre-built PC and swap it out to sell once it arrives, replacing it with the 9600GT).

Will be selling the RAM, DVD / CD-RW, motherboard + AMD 64x2 4200+ CPU, floppy drive and case. I'll keep the monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, so don't need any of these.

If you had the above budget and the option to hold onto the 9600GT (not sure of the brand, in case this matters for SLI), how would you proceed? Dell, Komplett or other? Any thoughts on a possible spec would be cool!

Thanks.

Einstein

your def best goin with komplett then me thinks, Dell pc's come loaded with so much crap i always have to wipe everythin and reinstall. Komplett come clean as a whistle, and with 1k you'd get a whole lot more for your money too.

my 2cents!

sdanseo

And with hardwareversand.de you can generally take anywhere from €100-€300 off Komplett's price for a €1000 pc

For that budget you'll quite easily build a Q6600 rig or even Q6700 with 4GB RAM and a TB of storage with a 9800GTX.

Blazer

There are also some great deals on dell outlet. Below XPS 630i comes to €1016 and contains dual ATi 3780's/ Great deal I reckon. Plus it's an ATX chassis and allows overclocking in the bios. And you're not going to get this config anyway else for this price.
Operating System: English - Vista Home Premium
English Windows Vista Home Premium
Memory: 3GB MB (2x1024MB + 2x512MB) 800Mhz DDR2
Hard Disk Drive: 500GB 7200rpm SATA HD
Video: Dual Crossfire TM 512 MB ATI Radeon 3870 HD
Modem: Modem not included
Sound Card: Xfi Xtreme Music
CD Read-Write Drive: DVD+/-RW (ReadWrite) 16X
MISC: MISC
Assembley Mod
Mouse Dell Wheel USB 2 Button Scroll Black
Dell Quietkey Black Keyboard
Documentation English Shipping Doc with Power Cord
Vista OnLine Getting Started Guide (WW
Image Restore - Vista
19-in-1 Bluetooth Media Card Reader

ionapaul

sdonn_1 wrote: »

And with hardwareversand.de you can generally take anywhere from €100-€300 off Komplett's price for a €1000 pc

For that budget you'll quite easily build a Q6600 rig or even Q6700 with 4GB RAM and a TB of storage with a 9800GTX.

That a big price difference alright.

Since I already own a 9600GT, is setting up SLI just a matter of buying another one of the same brand, installing both on an SLI motherboard and downloading the software? Or do you have to buy both as part of a bundle?

With regards hardwareversand.de, I'm just wary of the negative customer service reports I see here - if the difference was less than €100 I would be happy to go with Komplett as I've only had good experiences with them and peace of mind is worth that much to me!

TerrorFirmer

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

There are also some great deals on dell outlet. Below XPS 630i comes to €1016 and contains dual ATi 3780's/ Great deal I reckon. Plus it's an ATX chassis and allows overclocking in the bios. And you're not going to get this config anyway else for this price.
Operating System: English - Vista Home Premium
English Windows Vista Home Premium
Memory: 3GB MB (2x1024MB + 2x512MB) 800Mhz DDR2
Hard Disk Drive: 500GB 7200rpm SATA HD
Video: Dual Crossfire TM 512 MB ATI Radeon 3870 HD
Modem: Modem not included
Sound Card: Xfi Xtreme Music
CD Read-Write Drive: DVD+/-RW (ReadWrite) 16X
MISC: MISC
Assembley Mod
Mouse Dell Wheel USB 2 Button Scroll Black
Dell Quietkey Black Keyboard
Documentation English Shipping Doc with Power Cord
Vista OnLine Getting Started Guide (WW
Image Restore - Vista
19-in-1 Bluetooth Media Card Reader

That doesn't seem like a great deal to me. 3870's are cheap these days, worth about 250 for the pair and buying a second 9600GT and a sli mobo would work out better for the OP, as well as possibly even faster. To say you won't get that config anywhere else is grossly over-exaggerating unless the CPU you've left out is something seriously expensive....

going Sli only requires the same card - doesn't have to be same brand, clocks, bios etc. Just the same card - so any other 9600GT.

TerrorFirmer

For example:

Bigger hard drive, better sound card, better ram, probably a better power supply, blu-ray drive, 64-bit OS, etc. All he has to do is add his 9600Gt for a killer all purpose machine.

sdanseo

How does a 9600GT compare these days? As good as the 8800GT or more akin to a 7900GTX?

Macspower

Hi Paul,

Played with you the other night in the SE... don't think you'd know me...

anyway I went German and have no regrets..... excellent gaming rig for 1 k delivered... had an issue with the buid initially but I've had no probs since... excellent saving delivered to my door within a week of me sending the dough....

TerrorFirmer

sdonn_1 wrote: »

How does a 9600GT compare these days? As good as the 8800GT or more akin to a 7900GTX?

Way faster then 7900GTX, close to an 8800GT especially at lower resolution, a pair of them in Sli is generally faster then 8800Ultra.

ionapaul

Thanks for that spec TerrorFirmer, very helpful, maybe hardwarersand.de is the way to go? some questions though:

- Will Vista 64 hamper the running of games at all?
- Assuming that motherboard has onboard 7.1 sound, do I really need that Asus Xonar sound card? I only have 2.1 speakers and with my flatmate's love of sleep listen through my earphones half the time anyway. Wouldn't plan to play much music and onboard sound has suited me fine with every other machine I've had.


Macspower, sorry we haven't been introduced yet! Of course the new rig will be used for online poker more than anything else

TerrorFirmer

64-bit - support is fine for new games and drivers alike though if you're playing older games you might run into a few issues - someone else here who actually uses 64-bit Vista can tell us more, I've never used it to be honest.

The Xonar is not necessary at all, onboard these days is quite good - I'm actualy using the onboard of that very board and it's great, don't notice much difference going from my old x-fi and I've a decent set of speakers. It was more to show what you could actually get for 1K off Hardwareversand more then anything.

You could shave a few hundred off that easily by going for the onboard sound, a smaller hard drive (I'd personally never use anywhere near 750gb for example), dropping the blu-ray/hd-dvd in favour of a normal dvd-rw, etc.

Sqaull20

Komplett arent that bad if you customize the pc yourself



http://www.komplett.ie/k/config.aspx?ConfigSystemId=10093

Blazer

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

For example:

Bigger hard drive, better sound card, better ram, probably a better power supply, blu-ray drive, 64-bit OS, etc. All he has to do is add his 9600Gt for a killer all purpose machine.

you'd want to add a better chassis than that to match the xps 630.
Very strong chassis,,definitely not lightweight and very silent when running..
Processor was the Q6600.

AlmightyCushion

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

you'd want to add a better chassis than that to match the xps 630.
Very strong chassis,,definitely not lightweight and very silent when running..
Processor was the Q6600.

What's wrong with the Antec 900? Every review I've seen of it says it's a quality case. Also the processor that Terror has specced up is a q6600.

Blazer

It's a great case..I even picked it out for my brother. But it's steel.
The XPS 630 case is aluminium and it's at least 3mm thick. Huge difference in acoustics and cooling. The 630 gets a great review for it's low temps and low noise. It's way quieter than the Antec 900 even with all the fans switched on low. Plus the two 3780's are better than the 9600GT. So for the price and the warranty I'd say the XPS is worth it.
Even my own system is way noisier than it but that's down the qx6700 which could fry an egg at idle temps.:D
It's all down the op at the end of the day..Not sure how the return service works with Hardwareversand.de but imagine it would be a balls returning a pc to them? Correct me if I'm wrong.

TerrorFirmer

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

It's a great case..I even picked it out for my brother. But it's steel.
The XPS 630 case is aluminium and it's at least 3mm thick. Huge difference in acoustics and cooling. The 630 gets a great review for it's low temps and low noise. It's way quieter than the Antec 900 even with all the fans switched on low. Plus the two 3780's are better than the 9600GT. So for the price and the warranty I'd say the XPS is worth it.
Even my own system is way noisier than it but that's down the qx6700 which could fry an egg at idle temps.:D
It's all down the op at the end of the day..Not sure how the return service works with Hardwareversand.de but imagine it would be a balls returning a pc to them? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah I used a single 9600GT because he already had one, but I also added stuff the Dell doesn't have like bigger hard drive,better ram, way better sound card, better psu, and so on - if I matched the xps literally spec-for-spec it'd be much cheaper again....